The EDUCA (Education for the Future) Flagship, funded by the Research Council of Finland, addresses the challenges of decreasing learning achievement, increasing truancy and dropout rates, and digital technology in education by creating a novel research ecosystem that promotes the cross-pollination of methodological and conceptual approaches spanning educational science, psychology, learning analytics, sociology, and economics.
The EDUCA Flagship is creating a unique data infrastructure, integrating existing data while concurrently augmenting it with large-scale data collections and how AI can be used to support education.
EDUCA will generate deeper understanding of the effects of policy reforms and interventions, optimal learning moments and engagement, teacher and principal competences, and ways in which education can better support social and personalized learning processes and more effectively use technology enhanced learning environments in education.
The consortium of the EDUCA Flagship consists of researchers from the Universities of Jyväskylä, Helsinki and Turku, and Aalto University, and is led by Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, Professor of Education at the University of Jyväskylä. In total, the consortium brings together hundreds of researchers from Finland and from top universities abroad, such as Harvard, Yale, and Oxford.